


i pitch with a grenade (swing away if you're feeling brave).

by fuckup



Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant, The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife, F/M, au - kellis-amberlee never happened, au - masons aren't siblings, the time traveler's wife fusion i didn't know i needed to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 21:06:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12849528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckup/pseuds/fuckup
Summary: She either knows what she wants and what she wants is him, or she’s a professional who’s aiming to get his dick hard so his brain will switch off and she can fleece him for whatever she thinks he has. Mason knows he’s got a way with women, but this is fast, even for him. Option number two it is.AKA the one where Shaun isn't Shaun and George isn't George, but they're still the center of each other's universes anyway.AKA the Time Traveller's Wife fusion where the Rising doesn't happen.





	i pitch with a grenade (swing away if you're feeling brave).

**Author's Note:**

> I'm struggling to finish NaNoWriMo, so this weird little one-shot happened.
> 
> If you've never read/seen 'Time Traveller's Wife', then... basically, the guy in it has a genetic disorder that makes him spontaneously travel through time, especially to the childhood/life of the woman he loves.
> 
> Title taken from 'Wait Your Turn' by Rihanna.

Some things happen anyway. Even in this world, where Kellis-Amberlee never came to be - both strains of the would-be virus given ample time to cook into the miracles they were meant to be - some things happen anyway. 

Take Shaun. (Though, in this world his name isn’t actually Shaun. In an odd display of the universe winking at what could have been, his first name is Mason.) There are no zombies for him to tease and one-up, and he was not raised by people who saw him more as spectacle than son. There is no life-or-death reason he needs to be able to lock and load thirty-two different kinds of guns, there is no apocalypse to excuse the blood he washes from his cargo pants. 

But that’s what he’s doing, at 3am in the morning, in a 24 hour Laundromat he knows from experience is far too California brand hipster to ask awkward questions. He’s whistling the chorus to a song he suspects is meant to be a pop song, and he’s doing it with a My Little Pony t-shirt on (Some things don’t change, but some things most definitely do, if only because beggers can only be choosers to a certain extent, and proper shoes were more important than a t-shirt that didn’t declare him a Brony).

“Your shirt really is terrible.”

He looks up and over at the woman talking to him, fuck-me-he’s-charming smile already tumbling out for ready use. Talking to him is a brunette women with a resting bitch face and a small chest his eyes still linger on. She’s sitting on the bench opposite the row of machines, leg propped up at an angle to rest a Moleskine on her thigh. The blue jeans she’s got on don’t fit her right - too baggy, and not in a flattering way - but something about the confident way she has her legs splayed makes him think she’s got unexpectedly killer legs. 

“It’d look better on the floor, right?” He says, putting two thumbs at the collar of his shirt and pinching at it to tug his shirt up. Just a little. Not enough to get accused of public indecency (been there, done that), but just a sliver of his toned stomach muscles, to see if her eyes follow the movement. 

They do, and he gives her a shadow of a grin, dropping his arms down to his sides and then flashing his hands up at her, both palms up, to show that he’s joking. It is 3am, they’re the only two here, and she’s a small woman to his ‘white male in the age range most likely to be a serial killer’.

She doesn’t look scared, anxious, neither embarrassed or flirtatious as a reaction to be caught checking him out. She just looks… calm. Calm, when she drops her leg down the other side of the bench in a way that makes Mason low-key think about her straddling him. Calm, when she looks at him head on, wry. “It’d be difficult for it to look worse. If you want to know if I’m really attracted to you, ask me about your pants.”

“I could do that.” He acknowledges, and risks moving closer to her by way of dropping down on the bench opposite her. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t have even a flicker of unease, just that same steady, burning confidence. Damn, if Mason doesn’t find that level of nonchalance hot. He takes that as permission to open his legs casually, obscenely wide. “But I’ve got a feeling a girl like you doesn’t want to be asked. She just wants to take.”

Finally, _finally_ , he gets the slightest smile from her. “You think you know me?”

“No.” Mason says, and he’s not ashamed that his honesty is loud and plain in his voice, “But I’d like to.”

She leans forward, and his eyes flick naturally to her chest; she’s wearing an unseasonal turtleneck, but that doesn’t stop him from admiring the gentle curves of her breasts. “And if I told you I wanted you to fuck me?”

She either knows what she wants and what she wants is him, or she’s a professional who’s aiming to get his dick hard so his brain will switch off and she can fleece him for whatever she thinks he has. Mason knows he’s got a way with women, but this is fast, even for him. Option number two it is.

“I could roll with that - believe me, could I roll with that,” He’s a cavalier kind of lascivious when he looks her over, from her mouth to her chest to her crotch, just so there’s absolutely no mistaking what he’s talking about here. “But I’d want to know what you think you’d be getting from it, since I’m doubting mutual sexual satisfaction is your end game here, not when you’ve been following me for a block and a half.”

It’s only as he’s saying it that his brain whirrs and clicks that piece of info into place. He’s deeply observant - he has to be, with his situation - but he doesn’t always put things together in quite the right order.

Normally what happens at this point is the other person looks caught off guard, utterly surprised that he’s not as dumb as his good looks and flirtatious manner would suggest. It’s even more true in the case of people - men and women both - who try to get what they want out of him by getting him into bed. It’s as if they’re nonplussed that he can have a reputation for being a red-blooded American male, and yet _not_ give in to his hormones in the face of a pretty face and a smart mouth.

It’s safe to say what he is not expecting from this woman is for her to do this: straighten up with a hint of amusement in her mouth, a glint of it in her eyes, and say, with undeniable quiet satisfaction, “You’d told me you would be shameless, but I wanted to see it for myself, before.” 

Mason falters. 'You'd told me you' is not a sentence he hears often, but it always comes with colourful results. “Before?”

Unlike him, she doesn’t hesitate. She's probably never hesitated in her life. “Before I told you my name is Shawna George, and due to your Chronic-Displacement Disorder and it’s focus on me for reasons that have yet to be conclusively proven, I’ve known you all my life.”

And if he thought he’d seen her smiling before, now - now it’s one second after sunrise, and he’s reeling from that almost as much as the revelations she throws at him like fireworks. “Shawna George.” He says to himself as much as her, a little numb, a lot something he can’t begin to words yet. “Check that out.”


End file.
